omnidk-yearly-sub | Stripe Developers | Page 1

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 8:54 PM

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Hi there! You can't start a subscription and not charge without using a free trial.

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Why would you not want to use a free trial?

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You can start the subscription in the future using a Subscription schedule: https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscription_schedules/create#create_subscription_schedule-start_date

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 8:55 PM

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Hi Bismarck!

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long story, but to make it short, customer has already been charged but on a different method. Thus client wants to show on the billing portal the sub price instead of free trial.

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I had explored scheduled start date, but then it won't show on billing portal as an active sub at $xy amt.

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 8:57 PM

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Yeah that's not really possible. You could use a one-off invoice for that first year

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And just mark the one-off invoice as paid manually

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 8:57 PM

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If I start the sub with billing_cycle_anchor one year in the future would that do the trick?

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 8:57 PM

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That will show up in Billing Portal

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 8:58 PM

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gotcha, that makes sense!

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but wait, when creating the sub, customer is charged automatically right away. can I mark that first invoice as paid in the same api call that creates the sub?

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 9:02 PM

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No I'm talking about using a one-off invoice

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And then creating the Subscription in the future

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So you just create a standalone invoice that isn't associated with a Subscription within Stripe to represent the previous payment that the customer already made

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 9:04 PM

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gotcha

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how would that invoice then be associated with the subscripiton?

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 9:05 PM

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It would not.

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It would be associated with the customer

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And you would add some sort of description to the line item so that the customer understands it is related to the Subscription

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 9:06 PM

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oh, then the sub wouldn't show on their billing portal though.

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 9:06 PM

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But it would not technically be related within Stripe

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Right... for the first year the customer would just see the one invoice on the Customer Portal. Then you would start a Subscription for them after a year and they would see that Subscription and the previous invoice in the Customer Portal as well.

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This is really a workaround, since what you want to do isn't possible with a Subscription.

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 9:07 PM

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gotcha

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very creative idea!

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I will run it by the client

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 9:07 PM

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👍

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 9:23 PM

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You said: "Hi, if I use api to remove a product on a subscription, and add a different product, will it not charge on new product until next billing cycle?"

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 9:23 PM

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thank bismark 🙂

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*thanks

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 9:23 PM

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Have you taken a look at: https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/upgrade-downgrade?

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This discusses when we will charge immediately versus next billing period

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 9:24 PM

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I have, yes

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perhaps I need a closer look though

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 9:24 PM

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Cool! So the short of it is if the billing_period is the same then we won't charge immediately by default

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 9:24 PM

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perfect!

pliant cosmos Mar 17, 2022, 9:25 PM

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So if you change products/prices but both are monthly then we won't charge immediately.

pure herald Mar 17, 2022, 9:25 PM

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awesome, this sounds like the solution!

#omnidk-yearly-sub